


A Perfectly Natural Reaction

by trickybonmot



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: First Time, Hypothermia, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Sharing Body Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 20:10:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10704225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickybonmot/pseuds/trickybonmot
Summary: For sherlockkinkmeme.tumblr.com prompt #153:"Holmes gets trapped out in the cold and gets hypothermia. The only way for Watson to warm him up and save his life is to share body heat."My friends, it is exactly what it says on the tin.





	A Perfectly Natural Reaction

**Author's Note:**

> My first shot at ACD. So much fun!
> 
> I can't believe I initially forgot to thank my betas, [PipMer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PipMer/pseuds/PipMer) and [Iwantthatcoat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Iwantthatcoat/pseuds/Iwantthatcoat)!

I have remarked before upon Holmes’ disregard for his physical wellbeing. I have chronicled his willingness to ignore the boundaries set by common sense when in pursuit of the solution to a case. I know better than anyone for what seeming trifles he would gladly throw away his health and safety, for who but I has rescued him, bandaged him, nursed him, and lain awake long nights fretting over him time and time again? Yet, even so, I was surprised when he dove into the icy waters of the Thames.

It was a chilly January night. We had followed a young woman, a Miss Green, whom we suspected of hiding evidence related to the disappearance of a prominent banker, down to the river’s edge. We ducked into the shadow of a coal bin to watch her movements. There was a little wooden wharf there, and she walked out onto it, a penetrating gust of wind tugging at her mantle. Holmes gripped my arm tightly. As we watched she rummaged under her cloak and took out a small object which she clutched in her hand. She extended her arm and dropped her prize straight down into the water. It glinted faintly in the lamplight before plunging below the sluggish surface of the water. Her errand done, she turned on her heel and started back the way she had come, passing within a yard of our hiding place.

As soon as she had disappeared round a corner, Holmes said, “Watson, pray go and fetch one of those long oars that is leaning up against the dockhouse. I shall need it in a moment.” I went for the oar, assuming that Holmes meant to use it to probe the bottom of the river. But as I reached it, I heard a muted splash.

“Holmes!” I cried, and ran with my oar to the spot where he had gone in. I saw with relief that his head was above water.

“It’s all right, Watson,” he called. “It isn’t more than five feet deep.” And with that he dove down, I suppose to scrabble about in the mud of the river bottom at the end of the pier. He came up twice for air, and I had resolved to call a halt when he came up a third time and held up his hand triumphantly. “I have it!” he gasped. “Now, pull me out, Watson, if you please.”

I extended the end of the paddle down to him, and he took hold so that I could lift him to the edge of the dock. He got his elbows up onto the planks and tried to pull himself up the rest of the way, but he nearly slipped back down. I scrambled to take hold of his arms, dropping the oar with a clatter in the process. When at last I had him up on dry land, he was soaking wet and chattering with cold.

“For heaven’s sake, Holmes, you might at least have taken off your coat.”

“No time,” he said. “If the current had got hold of it, it would have been lost forever.”

“We must get you home and warm,” I said. “But I doubt whether a cab would take us, with you in that state.”

“Don’t concern yourself,” he said, shivering. “I have a place just half a mile’s walk from here.”

Now, when Holmes says he has a place, he may mean anything from an abandoned townhouse to a garden shed, so it was not without trepidation that I followed him through the winding streets. His shivers became more violent as we went on. He stumbled once, and then again.

“Stop a moment,” I said. Holmes shuffled to a stop, and if I had not been worried before, his unprotesting obedience would have been enough to pique my anxiety. He stood still while I unbuttoned my coat, then his. I slid the sodden garment back off of his shoulders. From there, it was a matter of some delicacy to get my coat off of myself and onto him without dragging either of the hems in the sleety mud of the street, but I managed it, more or less to my satisfaction. I considered simply dropping Holmes’ ulster — it might well be completely ruined — but there was no telling what Mrs Hudson might manage with it, so instead I draped the great, heavy mass of it over one arm and gave the other to Holmes, who leant upon it heavily. The ulster was quite unpleasant to carry and the suit I had on was scarcely adequate to the weather, but if Holmes’ estimate of the distance was accurate, at least we should not need to walk much farther. Even as it was, I wondered whether it would have been better to simply knock on a door and ask for shelter, but the neighborhood was just insalubrious enough to give me pause, especially as it was very late at night.

Even with my good overcoat on, Holmes was still obviously suffering. If he had spent all the warmth from his core, then the dry coat would serve no purpose but to hold his wet clothes against his body. It was, all in all, a profoundly stupid situation. Good men had died of less foolish errors. However, given Holmes’ piteous state, I resolved to save my tongue-lashing until after he was out of danger.

“It’s just ahead,” he said at last, and his words were slurred. I noticed with alarm that he had stopped shivering. We stumbled up to a narrow doorway, where Holmes knocked five times in a halting rhythm. At first I was afraid we would not be answered, but after several minutes the door was opened by a little old man (Italian, I thought) wearing a shabby dressing gown with a night-cap pulled down over his brows. He took a disgruntled look at Holmes, then stood aside and indicated by a jerk of his head that we should go inside. I followed Holmes up a dark side staircase—the man did not accompany us—to what proved to be a large, drafty garret room. The only furnishings were a thin straw pallet, a chamber pot, and a few blankets folded up in a pile. There was a window at one end admitting a feeble beam of moonlight, and at the other, the bare exterior of a brick chimney leading down to the fireplaces in the house below. There was nowhere to build a fire, but the chimney, at least, was warm. There was no time to lose.

“Stand here,” I said to Holmes, steering him to stand beside the chimney. Quickly, I heaved his wet ulster over a rafter to drip and pulled the pallet as close as I could to our only source of warmth. I then set about undressing my companion. He had become listless, and at first did nothing to help me; though after a moment he seemed to come to himself a little, and shrugged out of the overcoat as I lifted it from his shoulders. Jacket, waistcoat, tie, and shirt followed; then shoes, stockings, trousers, singlet and drawers, all soaking wet and cold to the touch. Even in the dim light, I could make out Holmes standing nude before me, his skin pale and cold as a fish. Of course, there could be nothing to inflame the senses in such a grim circumstance. I fell easily into my habit of medical detachment with regard to the human form, and felt no inappropriate stirrings, not even when considering what I was about to do next.

I picked up one of the blankets and laid it down on the pallet, then guided Holmes to lie down, which he did without complaint, curling up on himself like a child. I tucked the other two blankets over him, then set about removing my own clothes.

“Watson?” Holmes slurred.

“Be quiet,” I said.

“But—“

“You need warming up,” I said. “And as we haven’t any hot drinks or water bottles, you are going to have to make do with the one warm thing we do have, which is me. Now, be quiet, and don’t excite yourself.”

Holmes was quiet after that, but I could not help but feel his eyes upon me as I stripped myself naked. I quickly lifted the corner of his blanket and slipped in behind him. His back was freezing cold against my chest and belly; I inhaled hard at the discomfort, and Holmes gave a surprised moan. I wrapped my arm around his chest, tucking up my knees behind his thighs, so that as much of our skin was pressing together as could be managed. The large, heavy blankets settled comfortably over us without needing much rearrangement. The wool was somewhat scratchy, but one could hardly ask for fine bed-linens under the circumstances. After a few minutes, Holmes began to shiver. I hugged him tightly, willing my warmth into his chilled body. His arm came down over mine, long fingers wrapping around my wrist.

“I—I regret this,” he said, through chattering teeth.

“I will concede that you have been extremely foolish,” I said, though secretly I was relieved to hear him speak with some alertness.

Holmes laughed, an uneven bark made strange by his shivering. “Oh, I don’t regret it on account of the case. The case is solved. I only mean that I regret squandering such a tender embrace on so trifling a thing as having my life saved.”

My cheeks heated. “Holmes, you are delirious.”

“Maybe,” he said. “There is a curious—a curious honesty that comes over one when the body is in fatal straits. I have observed it upon more than one occasion. It is a species of delirium, certainly.”

He was shaking hard, still, his body tense all over. Without thinking, I pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.

“John—“ he said.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said. “Excessive excitement would be quite dangerous to your heart just now.”

He huffed dismissively. After a moment he turned in my arms, and I straightened my legs so that we could lie chest to chest. His front was as shockingly cold as his back had been. I suppressed a gasp as his freezing fingers slid across my ribs.

“God, you are warm,” he said. He shuddered and nuzzled his face down between my shoulder and the pallet, his cheek cold against my skin. I held him tightly, feeling his shivers diminish little by little. My shoulder was going numb from being pinned down for so long, but I ignored it. The smell of his pomade was strong in my nostrils, overlaying the faintly muddy smell deposited by the ungentle embrace of the Thames. The muscles of his back were hard with tension. Our knees bumped together. Hardly ideal, I thought; I parted my legs slightly so that he could get one thigh between mine.

“I thought we were meant to be avoiding excessive excitement,” he quipped. I decided not to answer, and a moment later felt him plant his foot on the back of my calf, his long, frigid toes splaying out against the muscle. I rubbed his back, and he sighed and shivered down against me. Some minutes later—far sooner than I had hoped—his shaking stopped, and I realized he had fallen asleep.

Thus relieved of my anxiety for his health, I was unfortunately left alone with an anxiety of quite a different nature. A curious honesty, indeed! Was I to understand that Holmes might welcome my attraction to him? I was well settled in my own feelings by now, and had made peace with the expectation that they would never be returned. Holmes had made it clear on many occasions that he prided himself on his ability to bend the urges of his body to the domination of his will. Even diving into the Thames was a part of that game. But then, how many times had I seen him miscalculate what privations his body could endure? Had he confessed another such miscalculation to me, just now?

This was neither the time nor the place to pursue answers to such questions. I shifted a bit in search of a more comfortable position, and eventually ended up on my other side, with Holmes pressed up against my back. Being more than a little exhausted myself, I soon dozed off as well.

***

Some time later, I awoke. Our little nest was quite warm, now, and Holmes was breathing quietly in my ear. I wasn’t sure what had wakened me, but then Holmes shifted slightly, and I realized he wasn’t asleep. Something warm and insistent was prodding the small of my back. My cheeks heated instantly when I realized what it was. Holmes must have sensed my waking, for he pulled his hips back quickly.

“Holmes?” I whispered.

“My apologies,” he said. “I was…dreaming.” I could tell he was in some distress at my having caught him. Good lord, if he only knew!

“It’s a perfectly natural physical reaction,” I replied. It was three quarters nonsense, but I so badly wanted to relieve his anxiety. “I don’t mind.”

He lay as though paralyzed, stubbornly refusing to take my meaning. After a moment, I wriggled backward. I had no idea what he would make of it, but with his cockstand pressed up between my buttocks, I found I didn’t care in the least. He made a sound not unlike that he had made when I first pressed my hot body against his frozen one, and clamped his arm tightly around my chest. He gave a long, hard rub of his prick against my skin, and then another, and I gasped, feeling how desire drove him onward in spite of his trepidation.

“Watson?” he breathed.

“John, surely,” I said. I shifted and opened my thighs a little so that his prick slipped between them. Then I squeezed my legs together to make a channel for him.

“Oh, by Jove,” he huffed, thrusting into it: once, and then again, his long body working against mine. Lord, the things I wanted to do with that body! I was wild with the sensation of his prick rubbing past my bollocks, of his fingertips digging into my chest. I took hold of my prick, but I only had time for a couple of pulls before his hand pushed mine away.

“God, yes,” I moaned, and then Holmes—Sherlock—was stroking my cock and fucking my thighs together in a quick, sure rhythm that soon had me quite breathless. All his lean strength went into each strike of his pelvic bone against the soft backs of my thighs. He pressed his open mouth to the back of my shoulder, and I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. “Holmes, yes, God,” I panted, trying hard to keep my voice quiet. He grunted into my skin, working his hand on me in a fast, fluid motion, and I came with my eyes squeezed shut, biting back my cries as well as I could. Holmes stilled his hand immediately, but my climax seemed only to spur him onward; he gave a few final, fast thrusts of his hips, and then slowed suddenly, whimpering against my neck as his prick spasmed between my legs, his emission dampening my skin.

Opening my eyes again, I was almost surprised to find that we were still in the garret and not transported to some strange, new world. The whole affair had taken only minutes. Holmes gave two more hard, damp exhales before turning his face away from my back. I missed his mouth immediately.

“Sherlock,” I said, liking the feel of the name, which I had said silently to myself so many times. “I—“

“Watson, I am sorry,” he said. “I never meant to place you in such a position.”

I debated whether to point out that, strictly speaking, I had placed myself in this position, but he went on, evidently at pains to express himself precisely.

“I can’t deny that I—that is to say, of course you must have guessed that a man such as myself might be inclined. But under ordinary circumstances I would never presume—“

“My dear fellow,” I interrupted him, turning over in his arms. “You may presume anything you like.” With that, I pressed my lips to his. He met my kiss with a soft sigh, his body relaxing against me. His lips opened sweetly to the touch of my tongue, and I kissed him deeply, heedless of his sleep-sour mouth and stubbled skin. Oh, the pleasure of it! Countless times I had imagined this, torturing myself with fantasies of the unobtainable, but nothing my poor brain had conjured could approach the true experience.

“Lord,” he breathed, when we parted a little. “I never guessed.”

“Nor I,” I said. “I was convinced that your pleasures were confined to the intellectual sphere.”

“I tried to make you think so,” he said. “But the truth is, I am a desperately physical creature. Will you kiss me again?”

With a glad heart I obliged him. We stayed in our nest until the light of dawn seeped in through the tiny window, and then I extricated myself, put on my clothes, and went back to Baker Street alone to fetch something for Holmes to wear. When I returned to the garret (on the sufferance of the little old Italian man, who did not in the least appreciate my reappearance at his door), I found Sherlock awake, crouching in the light of the window with our blanket wrapped around his naked shoulders like a cloak. He was examining a small object in the palm of his hand.

A thrill went through me at the sight of him, still undressed and all tousled from the night before, his bare knees and his wiry feet on the floorboards. I had not been able to see anything of him in the dark.

“What have you there?” I asked.

He held up a small brass key dangling from a purple silk ribbon, somewhat the worse for wear. This must be the prize he had been seeking at the bottom of the freezing Thames.

“Freedom for Mr Dawson,” he said, naming the man who had thus far been the prime suspect in our case. “And something a good deal less pleasant for our friend Miss Green. Come, Watson, the game’s afoot!” Rising, he dropped his blanket and came to take the valise from me. Impishly, I kept hold of the handle when he tried to tug it out of my hand. He looked at me in confusion for a moment, then smiled, and bent to give me the kiss that my stratagem had been designed to elicit. With his tall, bare form so close to me, I was achingly aware of the contrast in our states of dress, and I was conscious of the extra piquancy this lent to the desire I already felt for him. I’m sure he sensed it, too.

“My dear,” he said, “if it weren’t for the urgency of our errand—“

“I know,” I said. “I am quite able to wait until we are safe and warm at home.”

“Then you are made of sterner stuff than I,” he said. “But needs must when the devil drives.”

“The devil drives us all,” I said. “But I am at your service.”

And so we dove back out into the fray.


End file.
